


Neon

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Midnighters Timestamps [4]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Adam loves him anyway, Alcohol, Anal Fingering, Awkwardness, Claiming, Dirty Talk, Drug Use, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Nigel is gross, Rimming, Rough Sex, Spanking, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 07:48:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4130130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want to go out.”</p><p>Adam blinks. “Okay.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neon

Nigel, like any predatory megafauna, requires rest. Explosions of sudden ferocity drain him, and accompanied by a need to preserve his energy for those moments that require his particular skills, he spends a great deal of time in his den.

Well, Adam’s den, anyway.

He can sleep for days, after flights or meetings or “disagreements”. Even in times of peace, he seems disinclined to leave the apartment or Adam’s side, preferring instead to watch streamed football matches (now that Adam has taught him how to place bets online) or nature shows (now that Adam has downloaded several terabytes’ worth) or sprawled across the couch with a book. Granted, he spends just as much time sleeping with the book on his chest as he does reading it, but it hardly matters.

He is content.

He is relaxed, much as he can ever be.

He is calm.

That is, until he isn’t.

It is perhaps no wonder that the big cats on the little computer screen fascinate him so. Their speed and savagery, the long distances they travel for food, it all fascinates him, and though Adam has little mind or care for metaphor, the parallels are hard to dismiss.

Especially when Nigel begins to pace. Long strides across the apartment, each one requiring two drags on a seemingly endless cigarette. Narrow looks out the window. Shoulders drawn. Adam has seen tigers this way before, in the Bronx Zoo, prowling up and down against the bars of their cages.

“I want to go out.”

Adam blinks. “Okay.”

It’s enough that Nigel’s steps miss a beat, cigarette pressed between twisted lips.

“Fucking Adam,” he sighs, smoke curling upward. “I want to go out with you. Tonight. Now.”

"Oh.” Another blink, and Adam looks at the space where Nigel had stood just a moment before. Then he settles further into the chair, legs curled up and book balanced against his knees. "I don’t like going out," he reminds Nigel carefully.

They had tried, not often and not much, to go to fancy dinners and places like the opera. The success had come in mutually deciding neither could enjoy it enough to try again. And yet, there aches something in Nigel for the life he had before, for fast-paced music and crowded clubs, for a beautiful ass and a nice set of tits dancing in front of him.

There is, too, almost a childish need to share that with Adam, to let him experience that pleasure that Nigel had - would again, he is damn sure - when he had gone. Adam can feel the growl of displeasure before he hears it, and with a little sigh, allows, "Where do you want to go?"

Another pull of smoke peels from Nigel’s lips as he squints at Adam, suspicious of his answer solely because it isn’t one.

“Let me surprise you.”

“No.”

Nigel barks a laugh at this, shoving a hand back through hair several days unwashed, and closing the distance between them in two long strides. He sinks to his knees in front of the kid, gathering delicate fingers from off the book he holds - some thick monstrosity with planets on the front and an author with too many names. Nigel brings Adam’s fingertips to his mouth, muttering against them as his eyes flash bright.

“Let’s go to a bar.”

“I don’t drink.”

“You don’t fucking have to drink, sparrow.”

“Will it be loud?”

“I fucking hope so,” Nigel snorts, rubbing his thumb against Adam’s palm to spread his fingers. Each one is brushed across dry thin lips. Each one is kissed in passing. “Titty bar,” he decides. “You’ve never fucking been and don’t tell me you don’t like fucking tits, Adam, you’re a shit liar.”

Adam hums but doesn't argue. He has never been. And he is a terrible liar. He thinks momentarily of the pornos Nigel had found the first time he had come home with Adam, thinks of how he doesn't even know where they are, anymore, because he has no need for them. He has Nigel.

He splays his fingers with Nigel’s rough ones and folds them together, he frowns briefly as Nigel takes another drag of the cigarette but gently exhales it away from him. In truth, the idea of a loud bar filled with people Adam doesn't know and women he doesn’t know taking their clothes off for money he doesn’t want to push into their underwear, is the last thing he wants to do ever, let alone this evening.

But Nigel is pacing and he is restless and he wants to take Adam somewhere that makes him happy, to share that, and Adam finds that although his throat constricts immediately in panic, he just holds his breath and nods vaguely.

Nigel’s grin splits wide, and he leans forward first to stub his cigarette out into one of the ubiquitous ashtrays that dot the surfaces of the apartment, and then to slip his arms around Adam’s waist. He waits until the book is lifted to lay his head on Adam’s thighs, touching fleeting kisses to worn corduroy trousers.

“You’re a fucking angel,” he murmurs, before pulling himself upward and standing tall over Adam instead. He strokes his hair, soft little curls twisting around his fingers, and bends to kiss them. “Just try,” he insists. “Couple drinks and a lapdance, and if you fucking hate it, then we’ll go. I promise, darling, just tell me and I’ll bring you home and fuck you so hard you won’t even remember the fucking titty bar.”

Adam resists telling him that they could just do that anyway, without the stress of the bar and an unwanted lapdance. He leans into Nigel’s hand and follows him up with a sigh to dress. He had dragged Nigel to the museum last week. He supposes this is what people mean when they say love is a compromise.

He dresses far more formally than Nigel does, and after endless amusement on the older man’s end, forgoes a check vest for one of Nigel’s jackets instead. Dark jeans and a button-up, and Adam feels like he's going to court for jury duty. When they walk up to the bar Nigel has chosen, he wishes he was going to jury duty.

Bright neon and thumping bass, smoke streaming out of the windows where the smokers lean from them to sneak a cigarette, scared they will have to wait in line outside again if they leave. Adam fidgets with his hands over and over until his knuckles are white and Nigel sets a reassuring hand against the base of his back.

Nigel wants to go out. 

Nigel wants to do this.

He will do it for him, even if he spends the rest of the night in a toilet cubicle holding his hands over his ears.

Whoever Nigel knows here matters - or at least, the money that Nigel palms to them does. They are not merely left to roam the floor, picking out seats next to men who sit in stark silence with red-rimmed eyes or cheer and shout in noisy groups. No, they are brought through the floor towards elevated tables, plush velvet couches encircling an alcove that allows them a view of the room from above. There is a single prominence from the stage, jutting out into the center of the room, where a girl snares her legs around a chrome pole and slides head-first down it. Other girls seek through the room with the same feline stride that Nigel himself carries, their clothes diaphanous enough to reveal glimpses of what lies beneath.

Adam startles when Nigel sets a hand to the small of his back, and through the dull thud of music and haze of smoke, his voice carries soft against Adam’s ear.

“I love you,” Nigel swears to him, as he looks across Adam’s shoulder to the men and women alike, seeking out predators and prey, always wary. “You want to go, we’ll go. No fucking meltdowns, okay?”

It isn’t a threat, it’s an insistence. For as much as the place makes Nigel’s heart beat faster, his pulse hotter, he won’t do it at risk of upsetting Adam. Will the claustrophobia from the apartment come back? Maybe. He’ll leave himself then, or take it out on some unsuspecting piece of furniture. But any part of that is better than overwhelming Adam; any part of anything is better than causing that kind of distress to his sparrow.

“Sit,” Nigel tells him, when Adam doesn’t respond. “You don’t want liquor, right? A beer? They’ll bring us bottles, gorgeous, anything you want.”

Adam’s lips part and for a moment he says nothing at all, just tries to breathe, tries to settle his heart from the beat of the club and the panic in him that threatens to spill like a flood.

"Soda," he manages, very quietly, and finds his lips tilting in a smile when Nigel snorts and shakes his head but orders for him anyway. In front of them, the girls change, one slinking off stage with a final wave of delicate fingers and another takes her place. She is very pretty, short hair and bright eyes surrounded by far too much makeup. Her clothes - or lack thereof - bring out her skin tone, make her look radiant.

Adam startles again when Nigel sets a bottle of soda before him and falls into the plush couch with a beer. His arm snakes out to tug Adam’s hair gently, and Adam shifts to sit closer to him.

"They're very acrobatic," Adam tells him, as the new girl hoists herself up the pole with the expert grace of a trained gymnast.

Nigel’s brows lift, and his eyes crinkle in the corners as he watches Adam for a moment rather than the girl on stage. He tightens his fingers again, just a fond little tug as he strokes absently through Adam’s hair. Experience and enough goddamn time together has taught him at least a few things that settle Adam down - familiar weight and pressure against his body, soft clothes, Nigel’s touch for some fucking reason that the man has yet to discern, but it’s a shit thing to question luck so he’s never asked about it.

He feels reckless here, released from domestic confines back into his own wilds. Adam beside him only bolsters the feeling, but Nigel resists - for now, anyway - the urge to kiss him into the couch cushions. Instead, he looks back to the girl on stage as she sinks into a wide splits and curves her chest towards the stage, eyes narrowed and sultry.

“Tits are too small,” Nigel decides, taking a swig of beer.

“I think they’re fine,” answers Adam. He’s unable to turn away from her, though it’s hardly with the same salacious look as everyone else. Her movements are hypnotic, every turn of her hips and twist of her body. Adam’s never seen a woman move that way, and he jumps a little when Nigel snorts.

“Barely even enough to get a fucking hand around.”

“You like,” Adam says carefully, “large breasts.”

“Huge tits,” agrees Nigel.

“You don’t.”

Now Nigel blinks, bottle pressed to his lips. He regards Adam with a lifted brow.

“I don’t have them,” Adam reasons, leaning closer so he doesn’t have to raise his voice, leaning closer because he wants to.

“Thank fuck for that,” Nigel laughs. “Thank fucking Christ that Adam fucking Raki doesn’t have big tits. Or fucking little ones. Fucking hell.”

Adam watches Nigel a moment more, helpless in his lack of understanding but he doesn’t push, he doesn’t ask again. He just turns to look again. His body responds, he supposes, because it should. Something in the primitive hindbrain sending signals to claim and mate and reproduce. Adam understands the science, the biology of it all. He just doesn't understand why there has to be such loud music or strobing lights, when there are lights at all.

He is still on his first soda when Nigel starts another beer, he still obediently watches the stage when he can make himself look away from Nigel. He finds a rhythm in the bass enough to breathe around and through it and it gets easier.

He nearly drops his soda when Nigel leans closer and suggests they find a booth.

"No," Adam swallows. "I can keep watching the stage. We have a good view. And this girl has larger breasts than the one you didn't like. We can just stay here."

“I didn’t not like her.”

“You said -”

“I said she had small tits.”

“And that you like big ones,” Adam insists.

“That doesn’t mean - fuck,” sighs Nigel. He can see the way the tendons raise on the back of Adam’s hand - he can see the way the cushion behind his back expands again as tension moves him forward. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, about the girl with the tits - who was cute, she was very fucking cute - or the misunderstanding. Nigel shakes his head to dismiss the whole fucking argument and leans in to hold Adam’s mouth beneath his own.

It’s only an instant, fast enough that hardly anyone - if anyone at all - will notice, but Nigel waits until he feels a little puff of breath against his cheek before relenting. Calloused knuckles drag down Adam’s cheek, and Nigel lifts his chin to seek out the eyes that avoid his own.

“No fucking booth, then,” he agrees. “Tell me.”

“Tell you -”

“Tell me what’s upsetting you. Not all of it, I’m sure it’s a fucking long list,” he snorts, lowering his hand and letting it rest between their legs, fingers set against Adam’s thigh. “The first thing. The worst thing.”

“It’s loud,” Adam says, brow creasing, and Nigel nods. Adam has seen this look before. It’s usually a prelude to someone getting slammed into a wall or a table getting turned over. Determination sets Nigel’s jaw as he scans the room to consider his options, and he grasps Adam’s free hand in his own.

“I’m going to need you to fucking trust me on this, okay? You don’t like the noise, right?”

Adam nods, already dizzy from the sudden drop in his belly, color drained from his face.

“But you like the girls.” Nigel doesn’t wait for an answer, grinning sharp. “Yeah, you fucking do. Do you trust me?”

“Nigel -”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Nigel, please -”

“Do you?”

“Yes, but,” breathes Adam, shaking his head as Nigel lifts a hand into the air to flag down the waitress attending their seating. She asks if they want more soda, and Nigel responds with a muttered curse against the stuff before beckoning her closer. They speak too low for Adam to hear, but Nigel never lets go of Adam’s hand. He is sweating, big palm closed over little fingers. Adam knows he must have taken cocaine to be this energetic.

The waitress turns and crooks a finger at Adam, and Nigel settles back into the couch, emphatic as he says, almost gently, “Trust me.”

Adam makes a sound, a whimpered little hum, and clings to the couch like it's a lifeline. He doesn’t want to go with the waitress. He doesn’t want to be here. And for the first time in many, many months, he does not want to trust Nigel. He doesn’t move, for long enough that Nigel curses and gently runs a hand down his back and then he does because he's angry and he doesn't want to sit near Nigel anymore.

He follows the waitress with his arms crossed almost painfully tight over his chest, shoulders up, back bowed, like a man going to the gallows, not someone enjoying a strip club. He thinks, vindictively, how he will drag Nigel to the MOMA next time, make him spend the entire day there looking at art he doesn’t understand or like. It wouldn't make up for this, but it would make Adam feel better. He likes the MOMA.

He is led to a private room, just off to the side, and gestured to sit. The waitress asks if Adam wants another soda and smiles when he nods that he does. She leaves him and gently closes the door, and it is suddenly, blissfully, unbelievably quiet.

Adam breathes out, hands trembling from relief and pent up adrenaline, and squeezes them between his thighs. He can wait here. He can wait here with his soda and his quiet, maybe curl up on the soft couch and sleep until Nigel has had his fill of big breasts and loud music. There is some relief in forgiveness; this kind of compromise Adam is willing to make.

He jumps a little when the door opens, and quickly averts his eyes when the beautiful acrobatic girl from the stage comes in with his soda and a smile.

"Hey gorgeous," she says, and her voice sounds younger than she looks, but Adam knows it isn't put on, knows it is just how she speaks. "I saw you watching me when I was dancing. Beautiful blue eyes and that fluffy mop of hair. You're so cute, I could just eat you up."

Adam frowns and rocks a little closer to the edge of the seat, leaning forward, hands still pressed between his knees. He doesn’t look up at the dancer, doesn’t run his eyes over her almost entirely nude form. He doesn’t want to. He wants the door to close again and to sleep in the quiet until Nigel is done and they can go home.

"It's pretty loud in there, huh?" She asks suddenly, and Adam lifts his head a little, jaw tense and set before he nods his head.

"There are too many people,” he says softly.

"It can just be you and me in here then, honey," she says. "No loud music and no other people."

Adam looks up, brows drawn and looking entirely helpless before he swallows and shakes his head. He doesn’t want this - he wants to go home, to his books and his apartment and a dinner of macaroni and cheese. He wants to go home to Nigel and his soft cursing and his smoking and his gentle snoring when he’s had too much to drink.

"Hey," she says softly, and Adam looks up again. "I'm here for you, okay? Just us."

Adam feels some of the tension melt away and sighs, a slow nod, and a smile when she smiles at him first. She has freckles, he can see, now that she isn't dancing so quickly. She is very pretty. Her gaze softens when Adam calms, and she slips closer to sit on the couch next to Adam when he doesn't shirk away. 

"Why don't we just talk for a bit, and see what we want to do together," she suggests, passing over Adam’s soda, and after a moment, with a sheepish smile, Adam takes it.

\---

Nigel knows Adam is a horny son-of-a-bitch. Horny and filthy, for that matter, whether or not Adam recognizes it. Nigel finishes his sixth? Seventh? Fuck it. Some number of beers and snorts, alone in his booth, exhausted of noise and smoke and lapdances. He indulged, of course he fucking indulged. They’ve never really talked about whether or not they can fuck other people, but Nigel wouldn’t go that far. A lapdance isn’t fucking though, nor does a lapdance inherently mean that fucking is to occur. A vital life-lesson learned early in Nigel’s life that got him thrown out of one the less disgusting clubs in Budapest, although he managed to take down two of the bouncers before they leveled him.

He enjoyed it, like anyone would. Not the beating, the lapdances. He enjoyed the whispered false promises in his ear and the press of a hot crotch against his own and the gyrations of several women, mostly redheads, as they bounced and tossed their hair across his face. But despite his proclamations of capability, and the particular ability to fuck a state of amnesia into others, he was met with sweet laughter, also not unpleasant. Nigel knows a lapdance isn’t fucking and that since they’re at a strip club, it’s practically expected. And he knows that Adam is a horny, filthy little angel.

Which altogether leads Nigel to wonder, after two hours have passed since Adam was abducted, whether or not he’s the one who’s doing the fucking, or whether it’s Nigel who’s been fucked when Adam snuck out to find a cab home. If it’s the latter, Nigel will get a number here. He could, he knows, that’s an easy enough game to play when he means to play it. If it’s the former -

He knew a guy in Budapest. Scrawny little guy, very strange, glasses thick as the bottoms of beer bottles. Smart as shit and mean, sharp-tongued in a way Nigel envied, really, to be able to cut people down with words rather than - well - knives. He broke the mold, that one - the women loved him. Might have been the money. Might have been he was hung like a horse. Doesn’t really matter, because there wasn’t a single time he didn’t manage getting fucked when they went out.

And Adam. Adam’s better than that, certainly, Adam is beautiful. But he’s different, in the same way, he isn’t the normal kind of scumbag that comes into these places hoping to pay their way into the dancers’ panties. Nigel picks at the label of his beer, thumbnail filling with scraps of paper. He can hear Adam’s breathy little moans, his pleas for more, please, harder, _yes_ , wanting to be held in place and fucked until he’s breathless and scarlet cheeked.

Nigel can imagine that women would like him. More accurately, Nigel can’t imagine that anyone - man or woman - wouldn’t like him.

He stands, suddenly and declines the offer of another beer, then changes his mind. Accompanied with it is another substantial tip to ease the waitress into allowing a bending of the one-client-per-room rule, since technically Nigel’s the fucking client anyway. Well, not the _fucking_ client, that’s Adam.

No.

It had better not be Adam. Nigel isn’t sure what he would do if it was Adam, fucking some dancer silly. He wouldn’t take it out on her, no, he’s not that type - not that it would matter in a proper streetfight, as Nigel’s not about to get cut over gender discrepancies, but generally speaking, he hasn’t and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t take it out on Adam, he thinks, he hopes he wouldn’t, since he’s the idiot who brought Adam here in the first place.

Someone else, maybe.

Himself, probably.

And it is with this war rollicking unsteadily in his mind, buffeted by the battle between cocaine and alcohol, and memories of a hand broken far too often from losing fights with walls, that Nigel is lead to one of the private rooms.

He doesn’t knock.

“Adam fucking Raki, I swear to Christ -”

The gasp is shared by both, Adam and the pretty short-haired girl Nigel had bought for him. Two fucking hours ago. For a moment, none of the three of them move from where they are, Adam’s eyes wide, the girl’s more so, and Nigel just blinks at the two of them before slowing closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to his eyes until he sees stars behind them.

“What the fuck, Adam?”

“I’m sorry, I -”

“Not you,” Nigel opens his eyes again and tilts his head, before letting it loll slowly to the other shoulder so he can look at his wayward filthy lover. “Adam. What. The fuck.”

Between them, are pages and pages of notes, pages and pages of equations and notations, some crossed out and others annotated. Adam has his legs crossed on the plush couch, and the girl sits beside him, Adam’s - no, Nigel’s, it’s fucking Nigel’s - jacket over her shoulders and a pencil behind her ear.

“Henrietta is in her final year of a degree in mechanical engineering,” Adam says, turning to the girl at his side again with a smile. “Some of the homework is challenging, and I can see why. Not a lot is explained, Nigel, not in the textbooks, and lecturers are always pushed for time in their classes to explain. So when she told me she was struggling, we started to discuss, and it’s something I’ve covered before and I know very well and -”

“Are you - you’re fucking serious,” Nigel laughs, sighs, curses in a string of Romanian as Henrietta looks between Adam and Nigel in confusion.

“He didn’t want me to dance,” she says, carefully, and Nigel regards her placidly.

“I paid you to dance.”

“You paid me to spend time with him in this room,” she clarifies, raising her chin in a way that Nigel certainly appreciates, little tits or otherwise. “Whatever happens in here is between us. And you shouldn’t be here.”

“I fucking paid for this,” he reminds her, not with anger, not yet anyway, but firmly.

“You did,” interjects Adam. It’s honest, factual, enough that whatever is welling in Nigel is cut short, as he looks in disbelief across the girl’s homework.

“You were supposed to have fucking tits in your face, Adam, not a fucking textbook -”

“There isn’t a textbook,” he responds. “That’s part of the problem. It’s all photocopied lectures, lacking any sort of context -”

“Fucking lapdances, Adam, fucking strippers!”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to fuck strippers,” Adam replies matter of factly, and Henrietta presses her lips together so not laugh as Nigel curses loudly again and turns to look at Adam properly.

“You know fucking well that’s not what I fucking mean, Adam.”

“You wanted to take me out,” Adam reminds him. “So that we could have a good time. Yes?”

Nigel mutters and tips more beer into his mouth so he doesn’t swear again. Adam nods slowly, setting his hands against his thighs.

“You like the club, where there is loud music and women with big breasts dancing with them in your face. I like it in here, where it’s quiet, and where I can talk about physics. I think the night has gone really well.”

Nigel sucks in a sharp breath, but no words form. What can he fucking say to that? Adam is the happiest he’s been since Nigel dragged him here. The girl seems just as pleased, though it’s no fucking wonder considering -

“Did I just pay a fucking grand so that she could do her fucking homework?”

Adam glances to Henrietta, who offers only a wry smile and a little shrug, and turning back to Nigel, Adam mirrors the motion. “Yes.”

Nigel wishes he hadn’t asked for another beer. For that matter, he wishes he hadn’t come here at all, but despite the thrum of dueling intoxicants, the snare of sexual promise, the temptation of Adam sitting sweet and guileless, they are both content. Considering the very real possibility that Adam might have run to the bathroom and refused to come out, it could have gone worse. Much worse.

And at least he didn’t fuck her.

“Are you fucking done then?”

“Nearly,” Adam assures him, and Nigel’s lips part.

“Nearly.”

“Yes, we’re nearly done with this section. And then there’s Advanced Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics, to say nothing of Statistics and Data Measurements - Nigel, if there’s a weak professor in one class, it compromises all the others -”

“Adam.”

“- so it would really benefit to review the courses not specific to the degree, to make sure there’s no gaps -”

“Adam.”

“- and that’s before we even get to the project,” Adam scoffs, and Nigel finally lets his beer bottle clatter to the ground. The sound is sharp enough that Adam startles to silence, and Nigel holds out a hand to him.

“We’re going fucking home, Adam, I can’t take another fucking word about mechanical dynamics or I’ll fucking break something.”

Adam looks at him, gauges the level of displeasure as one that needs to be stifled before he does, indeed, break something, or - worse - someone. He turns to Henrietta and shrugs again, apologetic and sweet. 

“I hope even a little helped,” he says, and she nods emphatically, gathering the pages together and taking off Adam’s - Nigel’s - jacket to pass back to Adam.

“You are a legend,” she tells him. “A cute, sweet, smart as hell little thing, thank you.”

Another growl from Nigel and she ducks her head briefly, before leaning in to give Adam a kiss on the cheek. She stands and moves to go, taking the empty soda bottle, her notes, and Nigel’s beer from the floor. She gives a brief passing glance to Nigel and smiles wide at the door at Adam, who grins back.

When she’s gone, Adam shrugs on Nigel’s jacket and stands up to step closer, shoving his hands into his pockets and pausing when he finds something in there. He thinks nothing of it and smiles at Nigel instead.

“Did you have a good time?” He asks. “I had a good time. Thank you.”

Nigel glances out the door, propped open with his foot, and noting the lack of attention near them, slings his arm around Adam’s shoulders and brings him close enough to replace Henrietta’s kiss with his own.

“Shut up,” he tells him fondly, before turning a nuzzle against his temple and tugging him out of the bar.

\---

They are hardly through the door when Nigel bears down on Adam. Despite the small sound of alarm caught in their kiss, Nigel works their mouths roughly together, skipping the jacket altogether to instead fumble at the buttons on Adam’s shirt. He pushes him back beneath the force of his possessive desire until Adam’s butt hits the back of the couch and he lifts his hands to Nigel’s chest.

“You’re a fucking terror,” Nigel snarls at him, twisting into another kiss, breathless. “Spend my fucking money to sit around doing some girl’s fucking homework when you could have had her squirming in your lap -”

Adam makes a small sound and tugs at Nigel’s shirt a little harder, smiling against him when his shirt is yanked aside for Nigel to run his nails not-so-gently over Adam’s chest. He can feel that animal power in him, the vibration that comes from too much cocaine and too little space to spend the energy. He can taste the beer on his breath, can feel the heat of him, the hard jut of his cock, and yet there is more than that, in Nigel’s playful teasing there is something darker.

“You would have been jealous,” Adam whispers, delighting in the truth of his words when Nigel growls softly against him and bites the join of neck and shoulder, shoving the jacket and shirt both down Adam’s arms. “You already are jealous, and we didn’t do anything but talk about theorems and equations.”

Nigel growls again, warmer, and brings his hands down to Adam’s pants as he continues to push, guiding him to sit on the arm of the couch, then to lean back and drop into it. Adam’s hands leave Nigel for a moment to catch his balance and he laughs, watching the man through his knees, hooked over the arm of the couch.

“If she had given me a lapdance, rubbed up against me, and touched me, left little nail marks against my neck, pressed her lovely breasts to my cheeks -”

“Adam -”

“- kissed me maybe, rocked down against me until I got hard, because I would, she is very pretty -”

“ _Adam_ -”

“- you would be very jealous,” Adam finishes, squirming back onto the couch fully as Nigel stalks to him, shedding his shirt, and scales the thing as though it is no barrier at all, pressing the younger man into the couch until Adam giggles.

“You’re trying to make me jealous right fucking now,” snarls Nigel, broad hands pushing the couch flat around Adam’s head.

“I don’t have to try,” Adam grins. “You already are.”

“Because you want to fuck that girl, fucking - what’s her name -”

“Henrietta.”

“Henri-fucking-etta. You want to fuck her, don’t you? Horny little shit.”

Adam considers the question, blue eyes flashing upward towards the other arm of the couch. It tilts his chin enough to bare his throat, it bares his throat enough that Nigel sinks heavy against his little sparrow and sucks firm against his neck.

“My body responds to her,” Adam finally says, and he breaks into a shaky laugh when Nigel’s lips are replaced with teeth instead. “It’s instinct, when we find someone - usually through chemical expressions, you know, pheromones - who would be a good match for our biology -”

“I watch fucking nature shows, Adam, I know what a fucking pheromone is. You want to fucking mate with her.” Nigel’s rough hand punctuates his words, shoved hard up Adam’s sternum, scraping fingernails down to watch pale skin alight in stripes of pink. He turns his wrist and pushes his hand into Adam’s pants, squeezing his stiff cock enough to feel him leak thick fluid from it.

“My body thinks that she would be a good mate,” confirms Adam, before his voice breaks into a moan and his fingernails nearly split skin against Nigel’s shoulders.

“If that’s the fucking case then your body also thinks I would be a good fucking mate, so shows you how goddamn wrong science is.”

Adam shivers, rocking greedily up against Nigel’s hand and shifting his fingers up to tug against his hair.

“In the hunter-gather sense of the word, you are a good mate,” Adam reasons, before his voice is pulled to a shrill giggle by a twist of Nigel’s wrist and a tickling suck against a pert little nipple. “You can provide, you can survive, you would have very strong offspring.”

“Adam.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.” It is so fond and so warm, and Adam wraps his legs around Nigel and holds him close as he is briefly kissed before Nigel’s mouth explores lower down his body, his throat and his chest and his soft trembling stomach.

Adam bites his lip and gently moans, spreading his fingers in Nigel’s hair and grasping a fistful to hold when he sucks against his navel. The thought had never crossed Adam’s mind to sleep with Henrietta. As interesting as she was, he had no desire to. He had Nigel, he has Nigel, and he satisfies and fulfills him in every way he wants to be. He doesn’t need a replacement or a supplement, why would he?

But the thought that Nigel was jealous, that he had thought, considered, and fretted over the fact that Adam would have done something like that makes him hum in delight.

Nigel mouths against the trail of hair, downy soft, leading lower on Adam’s belly. His fingers catch his pants and briefs, tugging both down in a steady slide to reveal the peaks of Adam’s pointed hips, the plane beneath his belly button, the thatch of hair that smells of sweat and soap and not anyone else but Adam fucking Raki. He watches, eyes hooded, as Adam’s cock springs free and stands stiff against his stomach, and lips slow kisses up the shaft.

“Do you remember what I promised you, darling?”

“Yes,” sighs Adam, craning his neck to watch Nigel between his legs.

“What was it?”

“Which time?”

“Which -” Nigel looks upward, mouth parted against the head of Adam’s twitching cock. He blinks in disbelief, and tightens a hand in the waistband of Adam’s pants, to pull the fabric sharply against his thighs. “Do you remember _everything_ I’ve promised you?”

Panting a little harder at the snare of clothes squeezing into his skin, Adam nods, wide-eyed.

“Fucking hell,” breathes Nigel, before erupting into a grin. “Tonight, sparrow, what I promised you fucking earlier tonight.”

Adam licks his lips and arches up against familiar hands, welcome hands. He remembers, but he doesn’t speak immediately, he lets Nigel touch him and kiss him, nuzzle the warm hair at his groin until Adam makes a little noise.

“You said if I didn’t like it, you would bring me home and fuck me so hard I wouldn’t even remember the bar,” he recites.

Nigel growls, a low and pleased thing, and mouths against Adam’s hipbones until he squirms and tries to draw his legs up against himself and push back so Nigel kisses his cock again. He laughs when he’s held still instead, when his struggles prove, as they often do, to be futile. He does it to feel Nigel hold him, he does it to feel how strong he is, how well he can manhandle Adam when he wants to.

“Can you anyway?” Adam asks him, ducking his head to watch. “Even though I kind of liked the bar?”

“Fucking _can I_ ,” Nigel mutters, easing away his grin only to circle the head of Adam’s cock with his lips and suck away the precome beading at the tip. He presses lower, cheeks hollowed, dragging his lips up and down across the corona, further down the shaft, deeper until Adam’s pubic hair tickles his nose. When he pulls back to let it lay dripping against Adam’s belly, it pops from Nigel’s lips, damp and reddened.

He kisses upward again, rubbing scruffy rough cheeks against Adam’s soft tummy, sighs spilling hot against smooth skin.

“Do you want it hard, darling?” Nigel asks. “Do you want me to be rough with you?”

For all his many - _many_ \- flaws, for his anger and his outbursts, for the base animal instincts that drive him and the chemicals that wreak havoc in his brain, in this, Nigel is always careful. From anyone else, just the words _fuck me so hard_ would be enough, but with Adam, there is an extra step, always, to ensure that both know that he wants it.

And Christ in fucking heaven, does Nigel hope he wants it.

Adam squirms, a fussy sound pulling his brows together and his cheeks redder. More and more as they have played, Adam has found himself enjoying more illicit things. Sometimes he suggests them, other times Nigel does, but every time, he enjoys them. And Nigel like that, growling and possessive and rough, Adam loves so very much.

It reminds him in the best way what kind of predator he works and lives with, what kind of predator he loves. And it always brings Nigel such genuine pleasure, the way he looks at Adam after, adoring and worshipful and utterly contented… Adam would have him fuck him hard every day, if he thought his body could stand it.

“Be rough,” Adam murmurs, stroking Nigel’s hair from his face and accepting the kiss that is immediately pressed to his lips, with a smile. “Be jealous until you’re not anymore.”

“I fucking love you,” Nigel purrs, before their mouths collide in another rough kiss. He pushes harder against Adam, breaching his lips with his tongue, tangling them together, lifting a hand to grasp Adam’s hair and pull those silky curls straight. Adam’s moan resonates up between them, and Nigel shoves his hips downward in response, rutting heavy and hard against his little sparrow who increasingly is far more wildcat than bird.

It shows in the savage drag of nails up Nigel’s back, in the fussy squirm to twist free just to feel Nigel hold him in place. He sits back, panting breathless from the kiss, mouth smeared with spit, and jerks his belt free, shoves down his pants, kicks them off in a fit of cursing until he is bare.

When Adam tries to do the same, he is stopped. Nigel holds a hand around the waistband of Adam’s pants as if it were a leash, and pulls enough to bring Adam’s legs bound tightly together. He reaches with his free hand to catch one of Adam’s own that stretches for him, keeping that fine-boned wrist in his hand as he seeks the other, and pins them both above Adam’s head.

And then he turns him to his stomach, and holds him pinned, bound by his own clothing.

Adam laughs, just a single note, and nuzzles into the couch cushions. He doesn’t try to squirm free of the hard grip against him, he knows it wouldn’t do much good, and he can do it later once Nigel has allowed himself to play with this properly. But he does attempt to kick his pants from his legs, finding that it does little more than arch his back and bring his ass up to rub against Nigel’s heavy cock.

Adam moans, curls his fingers, and rubs slower.

“You know what you fucking want, don’t you, darling?” Nigel follows, eyes quick, the shiver that curls up Adam’s spine at the words and bends his ass higher. “My fat cock in your ass, your dick in my hand. You want me to have you fucking dripping.”

As he spits into his palm, again and again to slick his cock, Nigel manages to shut his own mouth enough to listen to Adam’s whimpered responses. No words, but demands all the same - it’s only been in recent months that Nigel has begun to realize Adam’s illicit appreciation of his foul fucking mouth. More’s the better, really, since Nigel can’t imagine anyone else he’d rather talk dirty to.

Spit-warm fingers press against Adam’s entrance, working in without pause but not so hard as to hurt unduly. Nigel circles the muscle, widening it, squeezing his tongue inside past his veed fingers just to hear Adam’s voice break higher, sweeter, his little sparrow’s loveliest song. He blushes all the way down to the curve of his ass, bright red and ripe, and Nigel drags his teeth where the swell of it meets his leg, sucking a kiss against the soft skin until Adam squirms back against his fingers.

Nigel is strategic in finger-fucking Adam open. He is firm, relentless, pausing only to stretch as wide as he can and feel Adam’s muscles give to him, accompanied always by a trembling moan. And he avoids entirely Adam’s prostate, brushing it only by accident when Adam rocks back against him with a plea for him to touch him.

No. Not fucking yet.

Not until Nigel’s done and Adam’s dripping. Not until Nigel can spread Adam, tangled up in his own clothes, onto his back and finger him wet. Not until he can watch Adam come, laughing, messy across his own belly.

He jerks his fingers free as if Adam’s body was too hot to touch, snarling a curse in Romanian at the thought of it. Sweeping his tongue wide over Adam’s hole, savoring how it stays widened beneath his lips, he breathes deep the scent of sweat and soap and muskiness and exhales only with a curse that sounds like a prayer before raising to his knees, and setting his cock to Adam’s hole.

Adam draws his hands down a little and finds the motion allowed. His hands clench over the soft couch, eyes closed and teeth bared in anticipation. Nigel would never hurt him, never in cruelty. And never once, even in play, has he gone too far and made Adam regret his decision, not once. Even now, as Adam squirms, he can feel Nigel’s lips hot against his skin, kissing in worship and comfort, wet, hot presses of his open mouth against Adam’s trembling skin.

He arches back, little sounds and needy pulls, feels Nigel start to breach him and stop with just the head inside. Adam shivers more, ducks his head to complain into the couch cushions, squeezes his muscles around Nigel when he doesn’t move. It feels good. He feels good. Adam thinks of loud music and strobing lights and wishes he had kissed Nigel there, shameless as he is now in letting him touch him this way.

Maybe next time.

Maybe when they go again and Henrietta isn’t there and he doesn’t need to help anyone else and he can straddle Nigel instead and distract him from the girls and from his beer. He says as such into the sofa and laughs when Nigel turns his head gently to hear him speak.

“I should ask one of them to teach me how to give you a lapdance, if you like them,” he muses.

An explosive curse gusts across Adam’s back, where Nigel has nuzzled between his shoulders. He brings his hips forward, snares his hands around Adam’s hips, and breaches him properly, filling his darling to breathless whimpers, leaving no room in him for even a moan, let alone his flirty threats of lapdancing.

“I would fucking come in my pants,” Nigel declares, lips curled over clenched teeth. The pressure and heat of Adam pulls sweat from Nigel’s brow and darkens the curls of hair on his chest. It drips, skimming up the pale, lovely plane of Adam’s body, and he whimpers at the tickling sensation. “You already make me fucking crazy, baby, you already make me a fucking mad man. Fucking filthy, you are, fucking naughty,” he grins, as a final shove plants his cock to the hilt in Adam’s ass, and a swift slap against his butt tightens him again.

Adam yelps and squirms but doesn’t push Nigel off of him. He blushes darker and buries his face in the couch cushions once more. Once in a while Nigel will say something, touch him a certain way, and Adam’s entire body loses control, and he cannot explain it. He had tried, for a while, to himself. When they had just started this together and Adam didn’t know what to do or expect. He had tried and then he had stopped bothering.

Science could only tell him so much.

Now he allows himself to accept what he likes and complain about what he does not. It makes interaction for them both much easier, it makes their relationship simpler for them both.

And this, the slap in reprimand, the little tease of the word, this Adam likes. And he knows immediately that Nigel knows he does. Adam shifts to push back against him and gasps out at the feeling of being so full, always, by Nigel. He moans softly and shifts enough to be able to nuzzle against Nigel’s hand where he holds his wrists, kitten-soft and needy.

Nigel releases Adam’s wrists, thrilled into a deep rumbling purr when he holds them in place anyway, and he cups Adam’s cheek in his palm. Bent heavy across his back, fucking steady slow thrusts deep inside him, Nigel watches rapt as Adam’s lips curve into little kisses against his skin, again and again. How could he have doubted for a moment that Adam would love another so much? How could he have considered ever finding such immense satisfaction with a stripper? It is nothing - for all its torrid glory - compared to the adoration that Adam gives him so genuinely.

“I love you,” Nigel whispers, voice rough from smoke and affection. “God, I fucking love you.”

His chest hair rubs damp as he rocks his body into Adam’s, relishing each clench that tightens Adam around his cock, groaning when he loosens again to allow Nigel to fuck him harder, faster. The couch rocks against the uneven floorboards of the old apartment, banging louder each time Nigel drives into him. Blue eyes flash past a curtain of dark curls as Adam looks across his shoulder to the man above him, and when his reddened lips part with a whimper, it’s too fucking much.

He fucks harder, pounding into Adam until the other lets his voice loose and free, trembling and coiling out into the room. He is beautiful, he is alive and squirming and real and _his_ , he is fucking _his_ and Nigel groans a vague prayer in thanks for it against Adam’s shoulder as he comes, hard, into him.

Pulse after pulse of thick, hot fluid, filling Adam up as he wriggles and pants into the couch, as he sneaks one hand down between his legs to stroke himself and moans so beautifully when Nigel catches his hand to hold it away, turning it to press his palm to his lips instead.

“Fucking naughty,” Nigel scolds him fondly, words smeared against his hand, sighed against his fingertips. “You are a very bad boy, Adam. Fucking filthy.”

He releases Adam’s hand and stings another slap against his ass, groaning when Adam tenses and it milks the rest of his release from him. Holding his hand there a moment more, Nigel squeezes appreciatively of his darling’s backside, until he’s sure he’s filled him with all he has to give. Only then does he withdraw himself, letting Adam slide to his side and with a hand in his tangled trousers, he turns Adam to his back again. He sets Adam’s skinny ankles against his shoulder and tilts his head, to watch a pearlescent bead swell and drip from his ass, soaking into the couch.

A curse, a prayer, an adoration all at once hisses from between Nigel’s teeth. He sets his fingers against the mess and smears it slick over Adam’s hole, hot and pulsing, and presses two fingers inside.

Adam makes a sound, not in protest but in surprise, and shifts against Nigel’s fingers as he had against his cock. His feet are still tangled in the pants he wore and he can do little more than flex his toes where they rest by Nigel’s ear.

Nigel looks euphoric, eyes wide and dark and cheeks colored just enough for Adam to suck his lip into his mouth. He loves seeing Nigel this way, rough and wanton and as needy as Adam is. He loves feeling him growl against him, loves his fingers stroking warm and soft and tickling up and down Adam’s body when they rest together later.

He loves him.

He supposes that’s that.

He whimpers when Nigel strokes against his prostate, the slip against it obscene, and Adam tries not to image the mess on the couch after this, and the more he doesn’t imagine it the more he can imagine nothing else. He presses a hand over his eyes with a moan and presses closer to Nigel, knees bent and ankles hooked over his shoulder.

“My angel,” Nigel praises him, tilting his head to kiss Adam’s ankle, dark eyes focused on the kid beneath him. “My little sparrow, I don’t fucking want them - big tits, little tits - baby,” he breathes, as he splays his fingers inside Adam to feel his come slick hot between them. “I want you. Only. Ever. I only fucking want you.”

He presses deeper, curls his fingers harder, rubs against the rigid little nub inside his darling and watches as Adam’s cock jerks in response. Each press of fingers pools more clear, slick fluid against Adam’s belly. It is hypnotic, and Nigel watches until Adam’s breathless panting draws him back again.

Lips turned to Adam’s ankle and hand hooked around his legs, Nigel asks, “Will you touch yourself for me? I want to see you fucking do it, gorgeous.”

Adam laughs, that breathless and helpless thing when he is close, or just after he has come, when he is entirely, almost childishly happy. He bites his lip and turns into his own hand before letting the other drop to between his legs and stroke. He gasps, already sensitive and slippery, already close and wanting to come because of Nigel’s cock and Nigel’s fingers and Nigel’s damn mouth.

He wants.

Adam strokes quickly, trembling and tensing his muscles, arching his head back and parting his lips on little sounds and drawn out drawls of Nigel’s name. He wishes he could call him pet names too, he wishes he could pull the same little sounds from Nigel as Nigel does from him. But even without that, he knows, he can feel that when he touches and Nigel looks, the man loses himself. When Adam tells him to do something, softly asks him, petulantly demands it, he will trip over himself to oblige.

Adam whimpers a little louder and slips the foreskin back from the tip again, refusing to look down, or up, or anywhere at all but the backs of his eyelids, because he knows if he looks he will come, and if he comes…

If he comes it would feel so good.

“Fuck this,” Nigel snarls, ever impatient, ever wanting. He tugs his fingers free from Adam, groaning from the pit of his belly when his come spills down Adam’s reddened ass. Without mind for mess, though he is causing a significant one, Nigel jerks Adam’s pants off his legs and hurls them to the floor. His underpants earn a curse in turn, thrown over the back of the couch, and Nigel holds his breath, struck, as Adam lets his legs spread wide and curls his fingers tighter around the head of his cock.

He is beautiful, and he was right. Nigel doesn’t care about tits at all, or that Adam doesn’t have them - thank fucking Christ. He cares only about Adam, Adam and Adam alone, and if the rest of the world fucking vanished Nigel wouldn’t miss it so long as his sparrow was here for him to press against, and whisper sordid words to, and let him rest his head against to hear his heart beat.

There is no one that matters more, or ever fucking could, and Nigel would sooner take a bullet to the brain than imagine being without him.

He sets Adam’s legs to his shoulders and slides back on his knees, feet raised onto the arm of the couch. His fingers press again, smearing through his semen, pushing it back into Adam as he seeks out that sensitive spot once more and rubs roughly against it. And dark-eyed, dark-cheeked, Nigel lifts his eyes to Adam as his darling presses his cock towards Nigel’s mouth, and the older man swallows him whole.

Adam squirms and whimpers, toes splaying wide and curling again, over and over in gentle undulation as Nigel works him closer and closer to completion, closer and closer to losing himself entirely.

Adam is tired, he is sleepy and emotionally drained and overwhelmed and Nigel feels so good against him, touches him so softly and gently and kindly and Adam bites his lip, holds it, and releases it only when his entire body gives in, and he spills hot in Nigel’s mouth with a little gasped noise of delight.

Uncaring for the mess, Adam slips his fingers through Nigel’s hair and strokes behind his ears, over and over in little touches and taps until his cock grows too sensitive, until he twitches and trembles and Nigel lets him go only to crawl up his body and kiss him immediately. He tastes of beer and smoke and salt and himself. He is heat and energy and want, animalistic and perfect and Adam never wants to let him go.

“I love you,” he mumbles against him, nosing softly against the scruff over Nigel’s jaw.

Nigel smears his hand across Adam’s belly, up to rest over his heart and feel it start to settle. He touches relentless kisses down his sparrow’s cheek, beneath his jaw, along his chin and over his lips and he sighs against them.

“I love you,” echoes Nigel. “I fucking love you, angel.”

He settles heavy over Adam, but does not try to make himself smaller - he knows that Adam likes the weight and familiarity of Nigel’s body over him, better than any fucking weighted blanket, anyway. They lay together, sticky and filthy and entirely exhausted, until their sweat begins to cool, and at the first shiver from Adam, Nigel slowly extricates himself.

“Bed.”

“We need to shower, Nigel.”

“Fucking bed.”

“The sheets -”

“Adam,” Nigel warns, standing unsteadily to take in the sprawled beauty across the couch, glistening as if he were carved from goddamn marble. “I’ll change the fucking sheets tomorrow.”

“And the dirty sheets?”

“I’ll do the fucking laundry,” Nigel agrees. He ducks and slips one arm under Adam’s shoulders, the other under his knees, and lifts him from the couch to carry him, muttering. “Fucking laundry. Like you ever do the fucking laundry.”

Adam mumbles something and wraps his arms around Nigel as he’s held, doesn’t protest it today, as he does some days, that he is carried and made little. He doesn’t do the laundry unless Nigel’s not here and he has to do the laundry. He doesn’t like the machines, he doesn’t like when things are not precisely sorted and they always get mixed up in the machine. He nuzzles against Nigel’s strong chest, against his beating heart, and groans, pleased, when he is set to the bed and can scramble back sleepily for Nigel to climb in as well.

Playfully, he is pinned again, and Nigel takes his time adjusting how he lies over Adam and pulling the blankets up over them both.

“You feel really good,” Adam murmurs, one hand seeking out to find Nigel’s and slip their fingers together, the back of his hand to Nigel’s hot palm. “I don’t mind if we go to clubs more, because I get to come home with you anyway.”

“Fucking spoiled,” Nigel murmurs fondly, watching through heavy-lidded eyes as their hands twine together, one soft and graceful, the other strong and calloused. Adam breathes a laugh, brows twitching inward.

“Which one of us?”

Both is the only answer.

\---

"Fucking laundry."

Nigel snaps a shirt straight before tossing it into the washer. One after the next of his own clothes, thick with the scent of smoke, and then in the machine beside, Adam's things, folded neatly despite being in a fucking laundry basket. With a snort, Nigel begs to set them in to wash, but pauses when his fingers brush familiar fabric. The coat he let Adam borrow, treated as one of Adam's own.

Fucking Adam.

Nigel shakes it loose and checks the pockets, plucking out a piece of paper and tossing the jacket in to wash. Something stills his hand though, before he throws the paper away - just a receipt for an iced coffee on one side. And on the other...

"Fucking _Adam_ ," whispers Nigel. Written in tidy pen on the reverse is a phone number and the name Henrietta, with a note added beneath:

_For homework or more?_

"Or fucking more," Nigel mutters to himself. He pays little mind to the older woman who gasps softly beside him. He pays little mind to anything but those two words, fingers pressing the receipt into crinkled lines, lips curled across his teeth. An entire night out to revel in his more sordid masculine habits, and it's fucking Adam who gets a number. Or more. He considers just throwing the thing away, no harm done, but thinks of the girl and her kindness to Adam, their notes spread across the floor, both entirely content. Nigel can all but hear Adam's voice in his head if he made an offer like that, and the immediate question of _more homework?_

It tugs his snarl into a slight smile, and Nigel pockets the slip of paper to bring back to Adam.


End file.
